Posted
by
Soulskill
on Friday May 06, 2011 @05:29AM
from the go-big-or-go-home dept.

donniebaseball23 writes "EA's BioWare is developing its first-ever MMORPG in Star Wars: The Old Republic, and the publisher is betting big that the project will be a huge success. Wedbush analyst Michael Pachter says development alone cost an estimated $80 million, with marketing and distribution adding in another $20 million. The good news is it shouldn't take much to break even. 'We estimate that EA will cover its direct operating costs and break even at 500,000 subscribers (this is exceedingly conservative, and the actual figure is probably closer to 350,000), meaning that with 1.5 million paying subscribers, EA will have 1 million profitable subs,' Pachter noted."
They're now aiming for a release late this year, but acknowledged the possibility that it could slip to January 2012. If you're curious about the current state of the gameplay, Eurogamer and Rock, Paper, Shotgun (PvE, PvP) both posted write-ups of some recent hands-on time.

You say that like there are people in the world not disgruntled by EA (ex-employees and non-employees [ie: gamers])

EA has single handedly destroyed my will to game. I've been seeking out game publishers that don't treat their customers like pond scum to be able to play decent games and every time I do, EA scoops them up and infects them with viral hate goo.

www.leagueoflegends.com
www.firefallthegame.com (release expected later this year).
Both free 2 play. Both not EA- or Activision-owned. May not be your style, but I've met the developers of both games and was impressed by their willingness to have open two-way dialog with the gamer base.
IMO, people are tired of spending $50 for a retail game, being forced to pay a subscription fee, and then finding out after a short while that the game isn't at all what was expected. Free 2 play can still offer gaming companies large profit margins while putting out quality work. A publicly traded company is always going to put the stockholder's interest in mind, not the game play experience.

Not only this, but also "how many months/years of subscription required by these people"?

This is an MMO, if it goes into a classic "many buyers who do not sign up for game time after their trial that came with purchase period is up", I suspect even a several million sales would fall short of paying for it.

MMOs live and die by subscriptions. Not by copy sales. We have a boatload of failed WoW-killers that had a lot of initial sales, but almost no people signing up for more time.

Since each class supposedly has its very own storyline, if they're all well done it might have considerably more replay value than one playthrough. I do agree that it doesn't seem to be built for very long-term sustainability, but if they can hold on to subscribers for even six months that might be enough time to construct a compelling end game.

Yeah, so instead of not reading the dialog box about how your carbine soldier needs to deliver 45 wombat hides you can not read the dialog that pops up from the same NPC asking you to collect 45 wombat furs.

The game has cinematic NPC interactions in the style of Mass Effect and Dragon Age. There are no text popups. An example of a quest in the empire has a father ask you to assassinate his politically inconvenient daughter. The interaction conveys non-verbally that he isn't very sure about his course of action. When you get to the daughter, you interact with her and at the end you can kill her or capture her. If you kill her you'll get paid, if you capture her and bring her to her father he is very happy that you didn't do as asked. In a way that is just a quest to go kill someone, but only in the same way that Lord of the Rings is a story about someone fetching a ring and throwing it into someplace.

It's the kind of situation that the bounty hunter Boba Fett might encounter, and indeed it is a bounty hunter quest. Bounty hunter is one of the classes you can play on the empire side. There are 8 classes in all, and the only one of them that is not based on an iconic character from the original movies is the Imperial Agent. He is more of a James Bond type of guy. I called the OP out because he was criticizing TOR for it's story, which is perhaps the one element of this game that is doubtlessly very well m

Hey! Don't you put down us womprats! We're people too! But we're treated like scum. I know a guy who used to bullseye womprats in his T-16 back home, even the poor baby ones that are not much bigger than two meters.

WoW's plot exists and for the solo leveling it is important, but there are other draws as well. PvP and daily quests keep the game interesting and playable without belaboring the story.

WoW has great balance between plot based and non-plot based content. That balance is critical. And unfortunately, keeping teams of writers and developers on staff to maintain that balance is expensive.

If you're competing with raiders, badges from dailies are utterly useless to you. They're aimed at casual crowd that doesn't do raiding, so that they can get their shinies too (albeit at a much slower pace).

They are also there to grant some bling-bling stuff like mounts and pets and weird items like banners. None of it really matters for gameplay.

Not only this, but also "how many months/years of subscription required by these people"?

This is an MMO, if it goes into a classic "many buyers who do not sign up for game time after their trial that came with purchase period is up", I suspect even a several million sales would fall short of paying for it.

MMOs live and die by subscriptions. Not by copy sales. We have a boatload of failed WoW-killers that had a lot of initial sales, but almost no people signing up for more time.

On a personal note, the more I read about this game, the more I think that it's doomed to fail by design. A plot-based game is good for one playthrough - after this, you're done with it. Meaning you'll buy a copy, play through the game and be done with it. You'd have to patch in new content (and by extension, new plot lines) at an incredible pace to keep people interested. I suspect that even blizzard with its incredibly polished development machine could not pull that kind of development speed off.

You're not supposed to make multiple playthroughs unless you are an altoholic.

The game will live or die by its ability to sustain play after max level is reached.

I know that I'll be rushing to get there, and when I'm there, I expect the game to really unfold; multiple instances, battlegrounds, gear that leaves me dreaming for months before obtaining it et cetera. If I get there and nothing happens, I will not pay further suscriptions.

I cannot imagine that this is different for other people. Most of those I'

This always confused me when I used to play WoW. Why rush? I always enjoyed the exploration and seeing the story (and in WoW effects of the previous games on the world). Half the people I know rush to the end, and once they're there do the same repetitive tasks and grinding over and over and over just for a shiny thing that lets other players know how "awesome" they are, and perhaps unlock other equally repetitive tasks for other equally pointless rewards. You don't even get to experiement with your cha

You are not alone, at least. This was always my main attraction to WoW... exploring the lore and the places I'd visited or possibly destroyed in old games. I don't have an addictive enough personality to play it for the in-game perks and rewards and shininess, it has to be a personal interest in the content and story. That's actually a reason I'm not that into MMOs, as I like a story with an ending, where the things you do actually affect the world. The cataclysm expansion added a little bit of the world ch

On a personal note, the more I read about this game, the more I think that it's doomed to fail by design. A plot-based game is good for one playthrough - after this, you're done with it. Meaning you'll buy a copy, play through the game and be done with it. You'd have to patch in new content (and by extension, new plot lines) at an incredible pace to keep people interested. I suspect that even blizzard with its incredibly polished development machine could not pull that kind of development speed off.

Well the Lord of the Rings Online is "plot-based" and is doing alright especially since going free-to-play / micropayments. The plot is a series of epic quests arranged in books & chapters that you can play more or less as soon as your level is high enough. It hasn't even reached The Return of the King yet so they have plenty ways to go and string it out further, probably an expansion or two at least. I imagine a Star Wars game doesn't even that limitation to be concerned about.

Do MMOs need to be 10 year spanning projects? I'm comfortable with the idea of an MMO being launched and canceled in 2 years. We've already played the game, know its mechanics, etc why keep it on life support via raising level caps and expansions forever?

I'd love to live in a world where new and unique MMOs were launched every year instead of this kind of one-size-fits all Skinner box McDonaldization that Blizzard is so good at.

>On a personal note, the more I read about this game, the more I think that

I mean... when are MMOs going to ACTUALLY try to change up gameplay? Story-driven missions and stuff are great, but what about some other form of targeting/using abilities? Is this still going to be a click-on-the-target, enable auto-attack, cast spell 1 followed by spell 2 followed by spell 3 and repeat?

Why aren't there more MMOs that mix in puzzles or platforming elements? Wouldn't it be cool if there was a sort of RTS mechanic? This whole "watch your casting

The puzzles, etc. DDO tried... but they quickly get reported to sites and people go to the web to look up the solution. Sure, you can ignore the web, but you'll find yourself kicked from a group for messing up the puzzle and/or not knowing the answer or methodology for killing that boss.

RTS would be neat. We had a discussion with the Vanguard devs in early beta about the necromancer being a massive number of pet class (zerging necro?) and they later scrapped it because the necro had too much of a chance t

I mean... when are MMOs going to ACTUALLY try to change up gameplay? Story-driven missions and stuff are great, but what about some other form of targeting/using abilities? Is this still going to be a click-on-the-target, enable auto-attack, cast spell 1 followed by spell 2 followed by spell 3 and repeat?

Sadly, yes. Because other targeting methods don't work well when your clients have pings in the 150-300ms range.

So unless you want to limit your players where they will only get good play if they liv

Vendetta Online's FPS-style ship combat seems to have handled this issue quite nicely. My latency is usually around 120 to 150 and I have no trouble hitting what I'm aiming at. Essentially, you select your target, and a floating reticule pops up that factors in the relative movements (and in the case of PvP, the latency of both players as well) of both you and your target, and tells you where you 'should' be aiming for your shots to hit; it's then up to you to actually hit that point. Not always as easy

This is code for "damn, November 2011 is looking pretty crowded with AAA title games - we might reevaluate the situation and climate - not to mention our customer's wallets - and release at a later date."

Not that I blame them. I can think of at least five AAA games coming out this fall, and I don't even follow gaming news all that closely. Christmas titles are getting as much pre-marketing as presidential candidates these years. After Valve has proven with three titles now (L4D, L4D2, Portal 2), a spring release can still be extremely profitable. Sounds like other studios might start caching in on the developing year-round release cycle.

I never have understood why game publishers historically shoot for a Christmas release date. When I was growing up my parents, friends, nor extended family ever bought me a single video game. It's too complicated to shop for games for someone else, especially when it's a PC game; you have a lot of things to look for in what your target audience needs: platform (Windows, Mac,... Linux?), CPU, memory, GPU, etc. On top of all of that you cannot return any software to any retailer and Steam only makes it sligh

I never have understood why game publishers historically shoot for a Christmas release date. When I was growing up my parents, friends, nor extended family ever bought me a single video game. It's too complicated to shop for games for someone else, especially when it's a PC game

As a kid I usually took a handful of my Christmas money out the day after Christmas and bought myself a game or two. It is hard to buy games for someone else, but game purchases still increase around the holidays.

After Valve has proven with three titles now (L4D, L4D2, Portal 2), a spring release can still be extremely profitable.

FYI: L4D and L4D2 were both Q4 releases (November 2008/2009, respectively). They often have major sales via Steam in the springtime to boost their numbers, as well as various holidays and seasons as well. Perhaps this is where you got mixed up.

Whoops! You are correct, sir. My apologies. I think they had a 50% off sale on L4D in early spring and then did a press release about how dropping the price of a game inside of a year can significantly boost overall sales numbers. That's probably what I am thinking of.

Who is going to play that? Shit, I always balk a bit at $60 for a game, but, that's at least somewhat reasonable. I don't have 100 million burning a hole in my pocket though, good luck to anyone who picks up that title. Not going to be massively multiplayer with a cost like that!

Who is going to play that? Shit, I always balk a bit at $60 for a game, but, that's at least somewhat reasonable. I don't have 100 million burning a hole in my pocket though, good luck to anyone who picks up that title. Not going to be massively multiplayer with a cost like that!

They have inside news that the US dollar is going to go like this [wikimedia.org]. You will see 100 million dollars as good value.

Considering the rumors that are and were floating around and the many delays this project suffered already it's hard to believe that it will cost "only" 100 mio. incl. marketing. I heard numbers reaching as high as 250 mio. and it would surprise me if they would manage to stay below 100 mio. for development only.

Eve-online: Great MMO supported by a company that loves it (to a degree) and really tries to make the game better. Driving 80% by player actions and the developers give the tools to the players to create their own content, this is a sandbox game

WoW: They got it right here, the first real user friendly pretty MMO, with a simple mission system and great back story supported by an existing legion of fans who already played blizzard games. Remember that it took 2

When WoW launched it had plenty of competition, remember Everquest II? Launched at the same time as WoW. Guild Wars launched in April 2005 when WoW was really struggling with hardware issues and over subscription. Matrix Online, same spring '05 time frame.

Eve-online: Great MMO supported by a company that loves it (to a degree) and really tries to make the game better. Driving 80% by player actions and the developers give the tools to the players to create their own content, this is a sandbox game

(laughs hysterically) Unless CCP has changed their tune in the last year, they're probably still rolling out new content while failing to fix the glaring bugs in the old content. Way too much time spent on the eternal "next year" tech of ambulation and new shinie

One of WoW's main competitor at launch was EQ1, not to mention 2 and Guild Wars, which in all seriousness wasn't a real threat. EQ1 was because there were fully established raiding guilds in it and it was a real gamble at the time to jump ships to something else. Even EQ2 had to compete with EQ1, and lost to a large degree. EQ2 is free to play and EQ1 people are still willing to pay for 12 years later. MMOs are about raids and that's it. Maybe for friendship for a brief period of time, but other than that y

Personally, I hope the game does great. I think more choices for MMORPGs is great. However, I would like to point out a problem that exists with the industry, and that's that any problem that occurs right from the start can doom a project forever. An MMO has pretty much one chance to make it, and if it doesn't succeed right out of the gate, it's going to move at a snail pace until the owners finally cancel it. Bioware has a lot riding on this because they're taking an intellectual property that failed miser

You petty much nailed it on the head. An MMO has to make a great first impression. STO is struggling after a mediocre release and poor reception. (On the other hand, the devs there are really into the community interaction; other companies could do worse than do that, even if most of it is putting out fires and damage control.)

KOTOR I and II were 2 of the best RPGs I have played. True that KOTOR 2's ending was botched up, but then it wasn't released by Bioware. I am really excited about this game - I haven't found a really good RPG recently after Witcher. Mass Effect and Dragon Age wasn't that good in my opinion.

As much as I like things Star Wars(particularly legos) I don't think I could get into a Star Wars MMO. As a "veteran of WoW" the thought of a sci-fi MMO is neat but needs to be something new and fresh IMO.

I am really hoping this will be good as a star wars fan and an Ex-Wow addict. However, and take this with the requisite grain of salt, I've heard from two different people working on this project that it's got alot of issues and they don't have alot of hope it will turn out great. They complain there is way too much focus on things like voice acting for every single character and not enough on gameplay and combat. It's supposedly not even in alpha testing internally so I doubt we'll see it this year, unless

Maybe it'll fail because of lightsabers merely existing. Ie, being a jedi in a single player game is great. But it's an awful idea to make this common in vast multiplayer persistent world game. Jedi should be rare. Sure, being uber powerful is great to attract the kiddies, but they'll only stick around a month or two before they see something else that's shiny. If you want long term players you need to have a decent game world and environment. (sort of reminds me about all the people who show up in Lo

Err, no. It will not fail for that reason - just like Star Wars Galaxies did not fail because Jedi/Sith could not cut through people at one blow. (SWG failed due to the CU and NGE bullshit.)

Who the fuck would want to play a MMORPG where one class could kill the others in one hit? Or when two Jedi or Sith meet, the one who lands the first blow wins? This is a massively multi-player game and all of the people who play it will understand WHY lightsabers do _not_ cut through people (and things) in one hit.

There could be an elaborate blocking/evasion/glancing blow system with a good ol 'kick' or 'sand toss' thrown in for good measure. The whole thing of lightsabre battling could be a great game play mechanic, and still do a ton of damage when it connects.

I want to know how much it will cost before they break even, they imply 350,000 accounts, is that from day one with a game bought and a month played? 3 months played? 6 months played? My poor marketing skills suggest purchases and a month payed for would make them about 20 million. So I guess those numbers implied some months payed for to offset the cost. I have no doubt it will succeed but I think the MMO movement is hitting it's plateau period. There will be new players at a steady rate but the meteo

is the use of Light Sabres. Otherwise, it's just some random sci-fi genre game with pretty hairstyles and face paint.

While Star Trek and Dr Who retained/reclaimed their original appeal over many iterations, I find it very strange how Star Wars - at least as ubiquitous and seemingly immutable - so quickly and carelessly mutated into something completely unrecognisable and utterly unappealing to those who loved the original.

If you only played through a single instance or did a single quest once ever this would make sense for an MMO, but thats just not the way it works. You're going to do the same instances over and over and if you've already been there you probably wont want to hear the story segments again.

This has the added negative effect of making the game inaccessible for people who join later. If you start playing 3 months in everyone is going to insist on skipping all of the cut-scenes in instances because they're sick

On the one hand you're saying that TOR is going to awesome becasue you played it for 20 minutes at a con, on the other you're saying that loads of your friends liked Rift initially and got bored when they hit endgame. Do you see the contradiction here? Lots of games have stories, WoW's story is reasonably compelling (not great literature by any means, but reasonably compelling) if you read the quests and pay attention to what you're doing. One of Blizzard's main fiction producers is Christie Golden, who